


Exhausted

by JoJo



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Community: 10_hurt_comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything's back to front and upside down</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exhausted

**Author's Note:**

> written, not surprisingly, for the "exhausted" prompt in my long-neglected [10_hurt_comfort table](http://solosundance.dreamwidth.org/48861.html#cutid1)

Exhausted, the horse was exhausted, and he’d told them as much. 

Repeatedly.

But they ignored him, damn them. Ezra didn’t know why. He didn’t know much of anything except the pitiable condition of his horse, found wandering without water after days on the desert floor. Beyond that sorry fact, everything else in his consciousness had been reduced to an overarching monotony - the creak of leather, the jingle of harness, the relentless and intrusive buzzing of flies around his head. The hard-hearted lack of response to his appeals left a slop of panic in his gut.

Damn them, all of them. From Larabee downwards. It was unconscionable to keep pushing the beast like this. 

It had been lost, walking about for days out there in the heat. And yet here they were driving it on towards town with single-minded determination. Ezra didn’t know who was in the lead, who was next to him, who was behind. Just that it was them, low-voiced, ignoring him, driving along the stony riverbed and through the foothills. While the sun beat down.

Lord only knew how his horse, so loyal for so long, hadn’t stumbled to its knees and breathed its last.

When, at long last, they stopped moving, he slid to a dismount, wild with anxiety. His knees shook, weak from emotion, and he reached one hand blindly to the tender muzzle, meaning to make up for his compatriots’ unfeeling attitude. 

But lord... everything was back to front and upside down, trees and sky and underbelly.

And my God the ground was hard.

“Easy there, pard. Nothin’s workin’ quite right.” 

The low voice was maybe Vin’s – it was kind enough - and the figure carefully blocking the harsh sunlight from his face with a hat might have been J.D. Ezra couldn’t concentrate on them. He focused instead on the loudest sound in his ears - the uneasy, dancing rap of hoofs so close by it was making the ground tremble under the back of his head.

“Easy with him, easy... No cause for panic, jus’ need him quiet, watered and cool.” 

“Hell, he’s tuckered out, don’t like the look of him, Nathan.”

Ezra’s stomach lurched in triumph. Hallelujah, they’d finally noticed that his horse was suffering, that it was exhausted beyond belief and needed looking after. The voices floating against the powder blue were clearly anxious, but trying for reassurance. 

“Reckon he’ll pull through all right - if we rally round.”

Ezra had plenty of advice about how exactly they should rally round, and quickly too since they’d been so tardy up to now, but it seemed he didn’t have control over his tongue. It felt as if his mouth was stuffed with cloth and his throat with sand. He thought he couldn’t move, but the sound of the dumb animal, his faithful friend, panting and wheezing within touching distance, grasping in panic for the promised water, was distressing. It made him raise his head, so he could see what was happening, and at once the sky became dark.

*

When he woke again his face felt like cracked wood. 

A hand lifted his own from where it rested, useless, on his chest. Despite the gentle pat, his fingers remained numb, unresponsive as dough.

“I know what you’re going to ask and the answer is he’s fine. Your horse is fine.”

It was Nathan again, with that half-soft, half-severe tone of his. He always used it when he was anxious. Ezra was grateful for the positive news although he’d also have liked to point out that even if it was true it was no thanks to them. Hell, they nearly killed the animal dragging it home like that, in that condition. He would have conveyed that piece of his mind but it stuck in his gullet, just, it seemed, like everything else. His gritty eyes blinked in a feeble, lazy attempt at communication.

“Standing up in his stall butting Buck in the chest and stompin’ his feet as usual,” another voice chimed in. The image, delivered in a low, raspy angry-sounding voice filled Ezra with a mixture of relief and apprehension. “He’s doin’ good, Ezra, so you don’t need to fuss no more. You’ve about driven us crazy with your fussin’. You hear me?”

“I know you can’t seem to fix it in your head but the damn animal was here all the time. He never was the problem.”

“You’re the one who ain’t well.”

Chris and Nathan’s words seemed to cross each other in the air over Ezra’s head. He peeled his mouth open.

“Exhausted,” he got out, not able to get his tongue around the word to any very comprehensible degree. “He’s exhausted.”

After a period of silence, a shockingly gentle hand was laid on his head.

“Yes,” said the raspy voice, no longer angry. Or at least, holding it at bay. “Reckon he is.”


End file.
